


Ficlets: Before the Expedition

by Ilthit



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Ficlet, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Trolls, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-03-09 18:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18922963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: Ficlets between 100 and 1000.





	1. The Score

**Author's Note:**

> Sigrun before the expedition.

Sigrun sinks her short blade in to the hilt. The troll’s skull disintegrates, spewing the smell of rot and vinegar.

This is her calling. Summer is high and her town depends on their troll hunters to keep them safe. And it keeps her blood up, quiets that restless itch inside her head.

She whips around to see her companions rush down the steep hill with axes and swords in hand. Behind her, there is a familiar rustle. She grins and flicks her blade around, reaches for her sidearm as the beasts begin crawling out of the ancient pigsty, attracted by the shouts. She raises her voice in a war cry, all effort towards stealth now moot.

For her people. For glory. For Odin.

When it is done, the air is rancid, but nothing more moves that shouldn’t. A young one took a bite. The one with the big ears and the crooked nose. Gods know Sigrun was never very good with names. “You gonna be all right, Big Ears?”

The girl nods. “I’m immune. Dad wouldn’t have let me come otherwise.”

“You did well.” She punches the girl in the shoulder. “No pain, no gain.” Her grin is answered with a blush of pleasure.

A week later, the wound is infected. “But… she’s immune.”

The healer shakes his head. “It’s not the Illness. It’s a bacterial infection, but we ran out of antibiotics last month.”

“What? Why don’t we grow our own? It’s just some fungus!”

“We do. We ran out. A ship’s coming in next week...” He looks down at the form of the sleeping girl, her crooked nose pink with fever.

Sigrun grits her teeth and swallows her weakness. She will toast her companion yet. If not in this world, than in Valhalla.

As the gods will it.


	2. Kaukomieli

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tuuri and Onni before the expedition. 
> 
> Kaukomieli is an character of epic poetry, but the name refers to thinking of or loving faraway places (at least in my interpretation), so I thought it fit.

“There is nothing out there for you. Why won’t you believe me? I have seen it.”

“You have, but I haven’t.” The susurrus of the mess hall surrounds them, the clacking of wooden cups and the droning of voices. “Lalli and I are going, and that’s it. We signed up! It’s done, Onni.”

A look of pain crosses his eyes. “But why? You’re not immune, Tuuri. You know what happens--”

She shakes her head. She won’t try to convince him anymore. Her brother will never see things her way.

Life is finite. Some scouts never return. Some lumber camps go silent, turned into messes of splinters and bodies. The names of villages are crossed out of the sign-posts.

Death is coming for everyone sooner or later. Tuuri supposes she should be afraid of it. She knows it; she knows its face. And yet the only thing she fears is not being able to experience any of the things she’s dreamed about, should it come for her tomorrow. There is so much she wants to find out about the world still. So many places beyond the defences of Keuruu that she wants to visit.

Onni doesn’t understand how much worse it would be not go out there, and survive another twenty or thirty years without ever learning to live in the first place. He encloses himself within the walls of the base. Lalli builds his own walls around himself instead. Both of them lock themselves in, each in his own way.

They don’t see that the only way to fail is to never try at all.

There is a world out there. Terrifying, dark and deadly, but new. And she wants to see it, at least once, before she, too, must cross that dark river. To cross it without regrets.


	3. Human Error

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Young Lalli still has yet to learn to control his emotions.

Lalli sat at the back of the row of benches as the sergeant went through the class, asking each young scout questions. “Very good, Asta. Now can you tell me how best to summarize that in your notes?”

“Danger. Two trolls sighted at the river, one seemed stuck at the winding beech-tree. Enlarged moose tracks across the river at the third bend from the base.”

“That would do very well. Lalli...” The sergeant fell silent for a moment and frowned at his papers. “Describe your last scouting mission.”

Faces turned towards him. Pairs of eyes, all of them staring, waiting for him to open his mouth. All he wanted to do was run out the door, grab his rifle and disappear into the trees. How long would it take for them to find him and drag him back?

But he was not a child anymore. Nobody could be, after the things he’d seen. And grown-ups do difficult things over and over again until they get easier. That’s what training is.

He let out a breath. “Clear until the old road. Then something weird.”

He fell silent. After a moment, some of the expectant stares fell away, disappointed.

“You can do better than that,” said the sergeant kindly. It made Lalli’s teeth ache.

That night he ran and ran and ran through the dark until his muscles were aching and his heart hammered in his chest, and he kept running all the same. If he ran fast enough, maybe he could leave it all behind—family, duty, pride. Close his mind and heart until not even shame could burrow its way to them, let alone the mutterings of ghosts or trolls. Make himself as clear as a ball of glass.

The Moon shone above, round and perfect, above these petty things.


	4. The Knowledge of Bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Onni Hotakainen

Night falls early in winter. Onni looks out of the dark of the barracks into the pools and droplets of light on the fresh snow, spilled from the windows of the mess hall, single candles in some windows, the glow of lamps soft behind others.

On nights like this, he can feel the silent world’s breath on his face. This circle of safety can be broken at any time. It is safer in winter, true, but winter is full of waiting, and it weighs upon him.

There is something out there that wants his heart, his soul, his mind. It can wait forever. It will never die.

He should sleep, but he knows he will not. He perches upon the edge of his bed instead and closes his eyes, sending his mind’s eye out above the roofs, the treetops, gliding over their border defenses.

There are bones everywhere, shining red underneath the snow.

-

The countryside rushes by under sunlight. Onni hides himself in the shadows of the train even as the window shields go up. He imagines his sister would have been glued to the glass, keen on the wide open spaces with the treeline looming in the distance, the old broken houses, the occasional creatures caught in the wire fence.

He must get close enough to contact her, to assure himself she and Lalli are safe. To help them any way he can. What else does he have left? And then… he must go back where he truly belongs. As soon as he’s made sure they will be all right.

Even if it means sitting in a screaming metal snake in a strange country, watching happy fools eating porridge with butter as if they weren’t speeding over the rotting corpse of a world they never got to know.


	5. The Girl Dies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waaaay before the expedition. Breaking the theme of this collection a little by writing about trolls instead of the characters, but honestly I'm getting a little embarrassed about only writing such very short fics, so I'm glad to be able to fit it in a collection.
> 
> Content warning, apart from what should be attached to SSSS anyway: Implication of sexual predation.

Her mother stops coming into the room after the third week. In those moments of clarity where she is still… what was her name?

…When she is herself…

She remembers the boils that were burrowing into her mother’s skin. Perhaps she is lying on the kitchen floor, shedding burned black peels of herself, worrying about her daughter. Perhaps she is dead.

Something has been scraping at the ceiling recently. She tries to remember who used to live above her in the apartment building, but it’s no use. Nobody in Stockholm knows all their neighbours.

…Her grandmother knew hers, up north in… what was it called again?

...In the country.

It hurts so bad that sleep should be a relief, but with it come the voices. So hungry. She hasn’t eaten for so long.

I haven’t eaten for so long. Are you still tasty, little girl? Are you still scrumptious?

Mr Olsson. Creepy Mr Olsson lives above her, with his smell of stale sperm and his dead, stuffed dog.

Scrape. Scrape.

Scrape scrape scrape scrape.

Why won’t she die? She can’t feel her legs. The skin of her arm has fused into the side of her body.

The moments of clarity become fewer. Farther apart.

It’s night-time when the ceiling splits and the mass of dark meat that used to be Mr Olsson crashes into the middle of the room. It twitches and lashes its fused legs, but manages to wiggle onto its front. Its fingers have become bone claws, now worn at the ends.

The thing that used to be a girl rolls on the filthy bed, over her own sheddings, and lands upon the floor. It lifts itself up by its arms and opens its mouth, wide enough to swallow a man’s head whole.

It has been so hungry.


	6. Varjoisat veet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For stillsyns@tumblr and "Any - Mermaids" as well as tripledrabbles@dreamwidth "surface".

Lalli watched the shape move under the water. This time of the year the lake water was dark, but the creature was getting closer to the surface as it approached his boat. It was too big to be a fish.

Seal-beasts were unknown in these waters these days—the Keuruu hunters had seen to that. Land creatures that could swim still sometimes made it across from the mainland, but the cats would find them before they reached the inner walls. This one was moving like a seal, though—swift, fat and sinuous. Lalli quietly undid the fishing spear slung across his back, careful not to rock the rowboat. If it was a troll or a beast, it needed killing. If it was a healthy animal, it would be dinner.

It came at him first. The boat swung around as the body hit it, nearly tipping Lalli into the reeds. It was bigger than he’d thought, the size of a man. He gritted his teeth, found his footing and swung his spear around, scrambling for purchase on the bottom of the boat, only to find himself staring into green, healthy eyes.

It was a young woman, with pale skin like the belly of a fish, and she smiled with sharp teeth. Her hair lay flat against her back like algae. Lalli’s throat made a strangled sound (you do not shout in the silent world, if you want to live) and he very nearly stabbed her all the same, though this was definitely not a troll.

The water-maiden laughed and dived back under, and was gone within seconds. Lalli’s knees buckled, and he sat down heavily in the puddle on the bottom of the boat.

“It is an omen,” said Onni later.

“But is it a good or a bad one?”

Onni just grunted.


	7. The Call of the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt on stillsyns@tumblr: "Ása Hardardottir & Teacher at Icelandic mage school - I had to choose a different path from my sister (each pointing at the other)"

“Off to sea again?” Ása nearly jumped out of her skin. She twirled around to see Inghildur leaning on the doorframe, her arms crossed. “How long did you stay this time? Four days?” 

“You’re wrong. I’m not leaving, I’m unpacking my suitcase. That’s how long I’m intending to stay.”

“Bullshit. I saw you wear that sweater yesterday.” 

Ása looked at the folded sweater in her hands. The knit pattern was rather distinctive. Dammit. She dropped it onto the open suitcase. “Yeah, well, maybe I’d linger a little longer if I didn’t have such a bitch for a sister.”

Inghildur pushed herself off the doorframe and took a threatening step closer. “I told you, Ása. This time you’re staying for your granddaughter’s wedding. I raised all your kids, but Valdis looks up to you. So help me Frigg, if you try to sneak out, I will curse your next voyage to the bottom of the sea.”

Ása scoffed. “There are sixty crew on that ship. You wouldn’t drown them all.”

There was a glint in Inghildur’s eye that Ása knew all too well. “Are you willing to test me, sister mine?”

It was perfectly unreasonable to expect her mage twin to actually drown a whole ship full of people. Maybe just inconvenience them. Delays, shortages, distractions, but Inghildur was no murderer, and if Ása spent another day on dry ground she’d go stark raving mad. It was just as likely Inghildur would forget all about it. She stared her sister down, opened her suitcase, and packed another shirt. By the time she tucked in her spare yarn, Inghildur had turned red and stomped off in a rage. 

Ása thought of her sister again when, weeks later, she had to give an expletive-laden order to divert the ship into the silent world.


	8. A Good Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ensi/Hilja. Also for Synchronized Screaming.

“And I thought it would be old age that got us in the end, eh?”

Ensi crouched next to the thing Hilja's body had become. She had work to do, even if she could no longer reach the gods through the darkness that had burrowed itself into her brain. But, in the name of Lempo, she had time to say good-bye. She had that much.

She reached out to touch that tuft of red and grey hair. It felt the same it had before the fall scouting expedition, when Hilja had stayed over at her place after sauna. She remembered the scent of that hair in her nostrils, tucked away in bed under the thin summer blankets, washed and warm and bone-tired. Before that, the scent of sausages roasting on the fire, the crackling taste of blackened skin; before that, the tap-tap of cards on the table, Hilja’s little self-satisfied victory gesture when she claimed a hand. Other evenings just like it, stretching back decades.

That scent was overpowered now. The world outside had finally crawled in to eat them both.

Ensi sighed and stood up. There were things she had to right now. While there still was an Ensi.


End file.
